Presenting Data in Grids
There comes the time in every Web site lifecycle when presentation of data in a tabular form is necessary. The Html element used most commonly for tabular data is of course the Table. The Table tag is one of the most popular Html tag and its use goes well beyond the intended use of presenting tabular data including layout.
According to our studies, 71% of all Web sites use the Table tag with 13 tags on average and the largest number we have found is 301 Table tags on a single Web page.
Using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) with tables on a Web page can make any table look nice, but when data sets and dynamic data that require controls of some sort to present the data or to delegate the control into the hands of the use then a good data grid control is of the essence. The most basic functionality of a data grid is sorting, paging, dynamic data retrieval (Ajaxified) and often editing.
Below is a list of data grid controls that is relatively easy to include in a Web page and attach data structures to them and additionally they look nice: